A syndrome or a reflection of a male-dominated workplace?

Queen Bees

By Jayne Keedle/Women@Work

Think fast. Who would you rather work for: a woman or a man?

Time and again, when researchers have asked this question, men have won, hands down. In 2010, a survey of 3,000 people conducted by UKjobs.net found that three-quarters of the men and two-thirds of the women said they’d rather work for a man because men were reasonable and direct. Women, meanwhile, were described as emotional, moody and more likely to feel threatened by people they considered to be potential rivals in the workplace. In short, women were queen bees and no one wanted to get stung.

Donna Rabito, human resources manager at Albany Medical Center, doesn’t have to think hard to come up with an example of a queen bee. “I was young, with a boyfriend, and ahead in my career. (My boss) just turned 40 and she was alone and she was just miserable,” Rabito says. “She made my life hell.” The day her boss turned 40, Rabito says, was “the worst day of my life.”

Emotional, demanding, and demeaning — and those are the nicer ones — are just a few of the adjectives used to describe queen bees. The term itself was first coined in the early 1970s, perhaps not so coincidentally around the same time that Margaret Thatcher came to power in the United Kingdom. Indeed, the iron-fisted, velvet-gloved British Prime Minister is often used as a prime example of a queen bee, although there are plenty others.

Meryl Streep’s character in The Devil Wears Prada and her assistant are both queen bees in different ways. Although the book was fiction, it was inspired by author Lauren Weisberger’s experience working as an assistant to Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour. While the editor was as tough as acrylic nails, willing to do whatever it took to hold on to her position at the top, her assistant was busy working to undermine the new girl, whom she viewed as competition.

Hey You, Get Offa My Cloud!

One of the big charges laid at the feet of queen bees is that they undercut other women rather than trying to help them get ahead. “I don’t think women are as good about helping other women as we’d like them to be,” says Laura Dehmer, vice president of the Albany-Colonie Chamber of Commerce.

“I’ve had a female boss who was much harder on the women than she was on the men. You were left wondering, did she want you to try harder or did she not feel as comfortable managing men?” Dehmer says. “I saw her as a very strong woman, always aware of elevating women’s status and stature in an organization, but the iron fist would never come into play with the men on the team.”

Dehmer’s experience isn’t unique. A national poll conducted by the Employment Law Alliance on bullying in the workplace found that while male bullies picked on everybody, women were more likely to turn their wrath on other women. According to the study, 40 percent of women identified as bullies targeted other women more than 70 percent of the time.

Some researchers theorize this happens because women feel more comfortable critiquing other women than they do men. Others wonder if women bosses get a bad rap for being tough because people feel freer to complain if they get a bad review from a woman than they would from a man. Either way, it’s prompted many people to say they’d rather not work for a woman.

A 2009 survey of 142 legal secretaries working in large American law firms, for instance, found that of the 53 percent of respondents who said gender made a difference, only 3 percent expressed a preference for working for female associates and not one said they’d rather work for a female partner.

“Females are harder on their female assistants, more detail-oriented, and they have to try harder to prove themselves, so they put that on you,” said one respondent. “And they are passive aggressive where a guy will just tell you the task and not get emotionally involved and make it personal.”

The Root of the Problem

As a psychologist and human resources consultant, Professor Michele Paludi of Union Graduate College has spent a lot of years researching and writing books on issues facing women at work. But while there’s been no shortage of studies on “queen bees” and their obstructionist tendencies, she sees gender bias as a far bigger problem than women behaving badly.

“When women exhibit the behavior that fits our stereotype, people say that’s why they shouldn’t be in positions of leadership,” says Paludi. “When men do it, it’s ignored. There are a lot of statistics about how men are keeping women down, but that doesn’t get the same attention. Men hurt other men but we don’t have a syndrome attached to it.”

Generally speaking, women’s management styles do differ from those of men. They tend to be less hierarchical, more team-oriented, more flexible, and solicitous of others’ opinions, Paludi says. In today’s more flexible, team-oriented workplace, those would seem to be positive qualities, but Paludi notes that women are often labeled indecisive or lacking in leadership skills as a result. Women who try to counteract that stereotype by being more assertive, however, are often seen as too aggressive or demanding. “The studies indicate whatever you do you’ll be criticized,” Paludi says.

“When women exhibit the behavior that fits (the queen bee) stereotype, people say that’s why they shouldn’t be in positions of leadership. When men do it, it’s ignored.”
— MICHELLE PALUDI, Professor, Union Graduate CollegeWhether women who have made it to the top have an obligation to help others break through the glass ceiling or whether the women who work for them have higher expectations that they will is a matter for debate. Why some are more willing to be mentors than others, however, may be directly related to how much they identify with other women.

A recent study conducted by researchers at the University of Leiden in The Netherlands set out to determine whether gender bias affected the way women behave in the workplace. The study involved interviews with women in leadership positions in police departments that began by asking whether gender bias was a problem.

It found that women who said they didn’t think gender bias was an issue answered questions like queen bees, saying they had adopted a more masculine leadership style and distanced themselves from other women on the force. Those who identified gender bias as a problem said they identified strongly with other women and sought to mentor them.

“If you simply put women at higher positions without doing anything about gender bias in the organization, these women will be forced to distance themselves from the group,” study author Belle Derks said in a statement.

Paludi says her own research suggests that instances of women undermining other women in the workplace are comparatively rare, particularly in environments in which women work alongside men in equal numbers. However, studies have found it to be more pervasive if the workplace is heavily male-dominated. Women who have fought hard to rise through the ranks of men to achieve a position of power are often inclined to see other women as competition. In a male-dominated environment, however, women may find they’re fighting over the same turf rather than gaining ground.

In a recent interview to promote her new book, I’d Rather Be In Charge, Charlotte Beers, an advertising executive and former Undersecretary of State, offered an example of just that, pointing out that when a company decides to put together a team that will include one woman and five men, the women aren’t competing against the men but vying with each other for one spot. “There’s a lot of literature that shows where you are a token, you can be easily replaced,” notes Paludi. “A lot of women compete with each other for a lot of things but they don’t see that it’s the organizational power saying I’m only picking one woman.”

So though the term queen bee was coined to describe the behavior of a woman in power, it bears remembering that the expression first appeared in the vernacular at a time when few women were in leadership, therefore there could only be one queen bee.

Paludi is optimistic, however, that as more women rise to positions of power the workplace will change. Instead of feeling the need to emulate men, as the women who first cracked the glass ceiling did for lack of any other role models, women will redefine what it means to be an effective leader. When organizational structures change so that more women are represented equally, however, studies show that women are more inclined to work together to ensure everyone succeeds.